Product Review: El’s Kitchen Gluten-Free Snacks

I already knew about El’s Kitchen when they contacted us to see if we wanted to try their gluten-free snacks. Technically, I suppose, I could have written back and said, “Oh, it’s OK, no need to send any samples over since I know what your food tastes like.”

But that would have been silly of me. El’s is delicious. Of course I wanted samples.

So, the other day I was on my way back from the supermarket, and a box was waiting for me on my front porch. Inside, a bag of El’s Medleys and another of El’s Bagel Snaps. Even though I had a whole satchel full of groceries, you can bet I opened the El’s first.
A note on everything El’s makes: it’s all gluten-free, along with being free from nuts, dairy, eggs and trans fats. The company’s first product was a line of spice rubs, and from there they’ve branched out and applied their rubs to some (conveniently) gluten-free tasty things.

I ate the gluten-free Bagel Snaps first. And I don’t want to tell you how quickly I ate them, because that’s embarrassing. Super-crunchy, a touch sweet and a touch spicy, and interesting enough to eat on their own. A handful of mine went to scooping up some whitefish salad, and were more than up to the task / did not crumble or break.

Once those were taken care of, I moved on to the Medleys. Back in my gluten-eating days I wasn’t the biggest snack mix fan, so when I first had these I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised, though, by a handful of things (or by the things in my hand): corn nuts, tortilla chips, potato chips, pretzels, and more of those bagel chips. Everything was crunchy, there was a good distribution of the different components, and it was nicely spiced without making my hands all gross and powdery (I used to hate Cheetos for exactly this reason).

El’s Snacks and Rubs are both available for purchase via their website, here. If you live in Connecticut, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oregon, or Pennsylvania, you may be able to walk into your local store and scoop up a bag. Take a look on their site, here (note that there’s a separate list of stores which stock El’s Spice Rubs). They’ll also be hanging out at the GFAF Expo in Dallas in early October, if you’re Texas-bound this fall.